Public Views Sought On A Train Station

November 01, 1995|By Ken O'Brien.

Palos Heights — While aldermen agreed Monday that residents should decide whether to build a train station, they disagreed on how to measure public opinion.

Monday night, the City Council's bloc of five majority aldermen called for a referendum on the issue. They said residents first must support a train station at the polls before they will vote on plans to build the station.

But Ald. David Gaffney, who is in the minority and who is pushing plans to build the station, rejected a referendum, saying the turnout at the March election "would not be great."

Gaffney said he will organize a petition drive to show resident support for the project. He vowed to bring signed petitions to future council meetings.

"We'll keep bringing up (the issue) until you recognize that the registered voters in Palos Heights want a train station," Gaffney said.

Aldermen debated how to measure public opinion at a special meeting to consider a resolution on whether the city should turn over responsibility for developing the station to Metra. The council voted 5-2 against the resolution, with one alderman who favors the project absent.

Ald. Mark LaVelle cited concerns about current traffic problems on Southwest Highway and Illinois Highway 83, which is near the proposed station site on about 40 acres of Metropolitan Water Reclamation District property. He said traffic from a station could lead to further congestion, but Gaffney said that would be checked in Metra's traffic studies. Metra is still studying whether the reclamation district land is usable, agency spokesman Chris Knapton said Tuesday.

LaVelle also raised concerns about whether crime would increase if a station is built. But Gaffney rejected assertions that a train station would lead to higher crime, saying it had not happened in other southwest suburbs where new stations had been built.

Since 1993, the council has been deeply divided on building a station. Until this summer, the council also disagreed over whether to condemn the Driscoll family's 10-acre farm in order to build the station.

In August, an appellate court overturned a December 1993 Cook County Circuit Court decision that gave the city the right to condemn the farm. After that decision, Gaffney pushed the reclamation district land, located south of the Driscoll farm, as an alternative.

The land is the same property that Corsi proposed as alternative to the Driscoll farm in October 1993, when her council allies were in the minority. But that fall, Mayor Bonnie Strack sided with her council allies in the majority, which included Gaffney, in rejecting Corsi's proposal.

"Now, all of sudden, it (the district land) is the greatest thing since sliced bread," said Ald. Jim Murphy, Corsi's council ally. "If it was not a good idea then, it is not a good idea now."